Is there such a thing as "sharp enough"?

I found as long as there is no chips in the blade or big burrs, usually that is fine for me. I just sharpened my wife's kitchen knives using my Wicked Edge. At first she was telling me that everything is fine but when I sharpened the blades and she used them she was shocked at how much easier cutting things were. Granted these knives have not been sharpened since we received them as a wedding present 17 years ago. I think sometimes we get comfortable with a dull edge. She actually loves using her knives again to cut up vegetables, meat, etc. Have a nice edge to cut with makes using a knife a lot more enjoyable for sure.
 
It's fun to see how sharp I can get an edge personally and everything, but at a certain point there is a pattern of diminishing returns in how much work ( and notice I said work and not time ) goes into an edge versus how much sharper it gets.

Personally, sharp enough to me means I raised a small burr on each side, honed the burr off, and that was that. Pretty much all of my knives come out hair-popping in half an hour, and sitting down once a week to do this is not a problem. That is just my practical way of doing it, and most of the time while these edges aren't exactly hair-whittling, toilet-paper-slicing, hanging-hair-splitting specimens, the objects they cut don't tell any difference.

I have gotten edges to those points after hours on pretty simple equipment... Equipment that a lot here would say is impossible to produce that kind of an edge. As far as sharpening as a hobby, to see how sharp you can get it though... I can't see how some guys can enjoy fishing or nascar, so I can see why people would see spending hours on a knife as bizarre but it is fun.

At the end though, the edge that gets a quick job and the one that bleeds air are not really that different. I think the phrase "Well now you're just splitting hairs" must have been born from talking about perfectionist sharpeners lol

Basically what I am saying is, I don't test cut paper or whatever to make sure my edge is sharp if I want it "sharp enough". There isn't a standard... I just sharpen and hone as I stated earlier, and once it is burr free and feels sharp to my fingers I just go with it. In all the time spent getting edges as sharp as I can get them, I just have a general feeling of when it is satisfactory to me.

It's sharp when I have decided it is sharp.
 
I also think that the blade grind and geometry play a big role in how sharp a knife should and can be. You can take a double hollow grind and get it alot sharper than say a chisel ground blade, like an Emerson. That being said, a knife with a certain blade shapes and grinds will get to a point where they can not get any sharper. For example: my Emerson Super CQC-7's will never be as sharp as my Yojimbo 2, no matter how much time I spend on it. It also depends on the application of the knife as to how sharp it needs to be; a hard use knife does not need to be as sharp as a slicer.
 
I'll put a working edge on most of my knives if I know I'll be using them some time in the future. If it's going to sit for a while and then only pull light duty, I'll put some more time into it. No point creating a masterpiece just to have it wiped away after a few cuts.
 
Ankerson said:
That and the material being cut, edge finish etc.

All of that will can and will be different from person to person.
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i will also add, for me the type of finish i put on a blade will depend on what steel it's made out of and what i'm cutting with it (along with what angle i set the bevel to).
 
I see a bigger need to reprofile. I tried sharpening several knifes but the profile was out of wack. Knife geometry also plays a huge role in blade performance. There are a lot of knives that I tried to sharpen but the edge was crooked. OnceI brought the geometry to center, knife performance was huge. This is not easy to do unless you have a system like wicked edge. Getting a nice even bevel on a knife is just as important and enjoyable as getting a very sharp knife. I never understood the correlation until recently. Sharpening a knife is not the same as resetting the geometry by bringing the blade back to center through reprofiling.
 
I consider my knives "sharp enough" when I can easily and smoothly cut slices off of a sheet of copy paper. It all depends on the knife blade material, time and effort spent, etc. At least in my humble opinion.
I use a Lansky Arkansas stone system and have a Smith tri-stone system as well. I also use a homemade leather strop with green polishing compound.
Some of my knives, better blade steel, will take a much better edge than say my Victrinox Swill Army knife blade will. But my SA knife has a great edge for everyday cutting and the stainless steel requires a bit less maintenance than my best EDC knife.

As others here say "sharp enough" is in the eye of the beholder.

When I was a kid "sharp enough" was gotten by using the concrete sidewalk...yipes!
 
Depends on what you're going to do with the knife, as well. If I'm going to be batoning a large knife through knotty wood, I don't really want a super thin profile with an I-can-cut-through-hanging-toilet-paper-without-it-moving edge on it...as it will get deformed by whacking it.
 
The paper slicing and arm shaving tests are generally what I use to tell me if a knife is sharp enough. I sharpen with multiple methods including bench stone, Sharpmaker, and paper wheels. I also use the thumbnail test to tell when the bevels have met when coarse sharpening.

I also use knives and chisels in my work. I agree with Andrew Colglazier that for a working blade "sharp enough to do the job" is a livable standard. It is fun to tweak out on a prized blade, whittle hair and have a mirror finish, but that would get old fast on the daily drivers.
 
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